Amazon is serious about gaming, hires Portal and Far Cry designers

Retailer hires Kim Swift and Clint Hocking to join its Amazon Game Studios.

Amazon has hired Portal designer Kim Swift and Far Cry 2 designer Clint Hocking, putting the industry veterans to work at the retailer's newly established Amazon Game Studios. The two developers confirmed their moves to Amazon via their LinkedIn profiles. Kotaku also reported the news today, citing sources.

Swift is most well known for helping create the acclaimed puzzle-action game Portal and most recently worked at Airtight Games on the Ouya-exclusive Soul Fjord. She takes up the position of senior designer at Amazon. Hocking is a journeyman of sorts, spending time with big-name studios like Ubisoft, LucasArts, and Valve. He's now working at Amazon as a senior game designer.

Since they have a director of narrative design (who just happens to be my namesake :D) I guess they're not exclusively gonna make games with no story whatsoever. I've never bought anything from Amazon, but maybe this will change if they make a good game for PC.

"Wow! Have you seen that new game. Looks totally sweet. Made by Amazon........." anyone else find that a weird idea? You know those developers that are "serious" about gaming will be working on some shitty mobile games that can only be played on the Fire Console/Not Console console.

I'm tired of big non-gaming related companies poking their noses into affairs that don't concern them. It's clear that amazon aren't in this for the gaming popularity, but for the obvious £££. They have no clout in the gaming industry, they have to stay out of it, otherwise the gaming industry will slowly take the direction of music, where creativity is dead, and it's all about money making. It sickens me to see these things, why can't there be a clear distinction between companies that deal with A and companies that deal with C. Facebook want in, Amazon want in, soon Ebay will have theirs, the perhaps Twitter, and Ryanair. Give it a break already.

The FPS game that should be their system seller actually reminds me of Battleship (the video game) which was nominated as one of the worst games of 2012 by some reviewers. So what Amazon seems to be offering is a bad gaming device with very bad games. It will probably fit the casual people just right, along with games such as Farmville ^^

So Amazon is serious about making games/console that no serious gamer will buy. Is that about right? I don't know... I just don't see anyone turning off GTA5 or Souls 2 (or a 3DS, or a Vita, or an actual PC...) to go play with Firecrotch. But hey, I've been wrong many a time. Maybe I am now too~

@lipote To prevent another crash the industry needs a universal terms of business. Until then outsiders looking to make a quick buck at any cost will always happen. Nothing Amazon is currently doing threatens the industry, their machine is directed towards casuals. Like it or not casuals are a big group inside the larger definition of a gamer.

@soupormanjbl Instead you care because you had to post an useless clueless comment here on this article blabbering non sense. You're another of those "geniuses" who think "I didn't like these games so they are shit", this is your way of thinking. We don't care for your useless opinion, so next time just shut up. This is also for the "genius" who liked your comment. Those games are great games despite your stupid biased opinion. Said this I think that this amazon thing won't go very well.

@eli2333 Amazon is going about this the right way though. Instead of doing what the Ouya did and saying "Please develop for us! We'll take any game. Give us ports if you can't give us exclusives!", Amazon is saying "We got nothing, so let's hire some proven guys to make our games for us, then give the ability to design for controllers for AAA titles so we're not limited to crappy mobile games".